17 Crateris

17 Crateris is a wide binary star system in the equatorial constellation of Hydra, located 90.5 light years away from the Sun. It is visible to the naked eye as a faint, yellow-white hued star with a combined apparent visual magnitude of 4.93. The system is traversing the celestial sphere with a relative proper motion of $0.54$/y, and is moving away from the Earth with a heliocentric radial velocity of +5.8 km/s.

The dual nature of this system was discovered by W. Herschel in 1783, when they showed an angular separation of $5.8$. As of 2015, the two components of this system had a separation of $0.04$ along a position angle of 210°. This is equivalent to a projected separation of $−0.06$; wide enough that, thus far, their orbital track appears linear. They are nearly identical F-type main-sequence stars with a stellar classification of F8V. The primary is slightly brighter at magnitude 5.64, while the secondary is magnitude 5.76.